Ramblings on social science, social networks, statistics, data analysis, computing, game theory and alike

Tournament of social learning strategies

Two people, Kevin Laland and Luke Rendel, announced the call for strategies of (social) learning in a complex and uncertain environment. The idea is inspired by the famous tournaments organized by Robert Axelrod. The task is to design a set rules in the form of a computer algorithm that will outperform other in an evolutionary sense. The tournaments organized by Robert Axelrod involved strategies for behaving in a repeated Prisoner’s Dillema games. In contrast, the task in this one involves taking actions and learning about their consequences in a uncertain and changing environment. As actions lead to unknown consequences a strategy need to learn about them. This tournament allows for try-and-error behavior, but also social learning through which it is possible to observe actions taken by others as well as the consequences.

For the author who submits the winning strategy there is a prize 10 000 Euro!